Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s short poem “Days” has been the target of much critical attention, which focuses on the ambiguity in the employment of the term “hypocritic.”

Introduction and Text of “Days”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days” displays eleven lines, an American Innovative Near-Sonnet.  Near-Sonnets, also known as “curtal sonnet,” as coined by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, allow for more intensity than the traditional sonnet, as they continue to reveal the beauty of the traditional form.

Emerson’s “Days” has garnered its share of ink from critics and scholars, who opine about the use of the term “hypocritic” in the first line “Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days.”

Some argue that the term be thought of as “deceivers” while others assert that hypocritic interprets as”actors.”  The extended literary device in the poem is personification; therefore, both “actors” and “deceivers” work meaningfully.

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Commentary on “Days”

Emerson’s short poem features a personification of “Days,” the common label for the time period of 24 hours.  His speaker wishes to castigate himself and others for wasting their time on foolishness, when they could be employing their efforts in worthy causes.

First Movement:  The Days Move On

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

The speaker is observing that the march of days looks like a long line of women, colorfully labeled “barefoot dervishes.”  These colorful ladies are “marching single” endlessly as they bring various items and events to the humans, experiencing their allotment of time.

The speaker asserts that what the “Daughters of Time” fetch each individual depends upon the human mind that becomes a receiving container. For some, the daughters bring precious stones but to others they bring only bundles of sticks.

Second Movement:  Various Gifts

To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

Time brings to each individual heart and mind only that which it needs or perhaps anticipates.  The “sky,” meanwhile, holds all that exists, as each day fetches those various “gifts” to mankind.

Third Movement:  Confusion of Guilt

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples

The speaker confesses that he too had merely been watching the passage of times/days, while not employing his allotment of time/days for the best purposes.  He has permitted his garden to become entwined in vines and branches.  He has become negligent of his “morning wishes.”  He has also merely settled for taking a few pieces of fruit and “herbs.”

Fourth Movement:   The Disdainful Day

and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Because of the speaker’s complacent observance, the day has become a bit vexed because the speaker has not attempted to procure as much out of his valuable allotment of time/days as he should have done.  The day as a “daughter of time” had thus become dismayed by the heedless human being who should have known better and thus behaved more enthusiastically.

The Use of Ambiguity

The resonating value of poetic language sometimes permits words to work with many layers of meaning.  The word “hypocritic” resonates with two meanings: deceivers and actors.

The words are not opposites, and they are not mutually exclusive. Actors are essentially “deceivers” because they perform in rôles that represent persons or beings other than who the actors are.  In Emerson’s “Days,” the impact of the poem depends greatly upon the experience of each reader.

A human mind has conceived of the personification of time as “daughters,” and, therefore, it is human perception that perceives the meaning of “deceiver” vs “actor.”

The  poem’s speaker, offering his personal view after watching these “Daughters of Time,” has decided that these daughters are “hypocritic Days.”  He thus demonstrates that he has discovered something valuable and profound from the “daughters”—these  personified days.

Even though his learning experience  may have lasted his entire lifetime, he is revealing that he now comprehends that each day is offering each individual human being what he needs or wants, all after “his own will.”

The speaker then reveals his understanding so that his fellow beings may benefit from his learning.  He understands that those “days” serve as actors, and so he has placed them in a specific rôle as personified days, that is,  “daughters.”  They also behave as “barefoot dervishes,” while they march in that limitless parade.

In their rôles as actors, the daughter-days appear to play no part in hypocrisy, but then the human mind can reason that if the human being were to choose the valuable as easily as the valueless, then why did those days not influence one to move in the proper direction?  Clearly, such a thought indicates that some deception might be part of the equation.

Therefore, the human mind can easily interpret the meaning of “hypocritic” to suggest that those “days” are behaving as both actor and deceiver.  The human mind can perceive the actions of the “daughters of Time” and be able to decide their true identify as well as purpose of those “dervishes” who continue to march in that long parade.

As time flows by, the human mind that has become a keen observer becomes aware of itself as holding both ideas of acting and deceiving.  It is obviously the human mind that has conceived of and named each action.  It is, also, the human mind that has decided that it possesses the ability to share experiences, even as those deceiving “actors” continue to move on, one day at time.

The Explicator and ESQ Debate

In the November 1945 volume 4 issue 2 of The Explicator, the prestigious publication, dedicated only to short explications, the editors elucidated their reasons for interpreting the term “hypocritic” in the first line of Emerson’s “Days” as meaning “deceivers.”

Five months later, Joseph Jones, in the April 1946 issue of The Explicator, suggested that the term should be interpreted as “actors.”  One year later in the April 1947 issue, Edward G. Fletcher brought the argument back to “deceivers.  After almost two decades, James E. White had moved  back to “actors” as he argued his ideas in the 1963 issue of the now defunct Emerson Society Quarterly.

Part of my article here Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Days” appeared in the Fall 1986 issue of The Explicator.  I argued that the meaning of the term is ambiguous and can be interpreted to support both meanings —”actors” and deceivers.”